Massey Knakal turns 25 this month

Massey Knakal Realty Services, one of the city’s top brokerages for small and mid-sized properties, will mark its 25th anniversary this month. The firm currently has $17 billion in total sales with 175 employees, a far cry from the time when the firm only had $15,000 in the bank. Indeed in late 1990, the commercial market was so slow that Knakal and his partner Paul Massey were making cold calls and playing solitaire in the office.

“We considered going to Atlantic City and putting the $15,000 on black,” Massey Knakal chairman Bob Knakal told the New York Observer.

As they were mulling shutting the firm down, they managed to do a three-building Deal On East 50th Street that kept them afloat, Knakal told the newspaper.

“Throughout that process, we kept our heads down and kept believing we could succeed, but it was a very scary time,” Knakal added.
RFR Realty’s Aby Rosen, who has worked with Massey Knakal since 1991 and is their landlord at Their 275 Madison Avenue headquarters, told the Observer that the firm stood out for its integrity.

“They bring the buyer to the table by working and really advising them, even if they are on the sales side,” Rosen said. [NYO]  – Hiten Samtani